If you’ve ever hired a marketing agency for your SaaS startup and not gotten the results you wanted, you’re not alone.
Hiring a marketing agency and having the relationship break down and fail is frustrating for SaaS founders. In this blog, we have rounded up the top five mistakes startups make when choosing a marketing agency. We also provide solutions to each issue to ensure that you don’t make them.
5 Key Mistakes SaaS Startups Make with Marketing Agencies and The Solutions
Before you decide on a marketing agency to work with your SaaS startup, be aware of these five key mistakes that put that relationship at risk.
1. Lack of Clear Goals and Objectives:
When a SaaS startup doesn’t have clear and well-defined goals for its marketing efforts, it can lead to misaligned expectations. The agency will be working with ineffective strategies from the get-go. For example, if the SaaS founder says the company wants to increase its pipeline, the agency may work towards getting leads when the startup actually wants warm MQLs that are ready to convert.
Another common issue is when a business sets overly ambitious goals without considering market conditions and resource constraints. If the agency accepts those goals, it can lead to frustration and disappointment. For instance, a business can demand 100 paid MQLs from Google when its budget is $200 per month. It will become very difficult to generate that many MQLs within such a tight budget.
Solution: For the above issues, the negotiation and decision stage between the startup and the agency needs an open and honest dialogue. Both parties must be clear about expectations and deliverable results, assigning SMART goals to them.
The marketing agency should also create a detailed marketing plan to guide their efforts. The plan should be aligned with the startup’s goals. The client should also approve the plan to ensure that it is going in the desired direction.
Finally, the world of business and marketing moves fast. Every quarter the agency and the startup should ensure that they’re still working towards the same goals and that their plan is still the best one. If it isn’t, rethink the goals and OKRs for the quarter.
2. Insufficient Communication and Collaboration:
Clear communication is essential to ensure that the two businesses work well together. When messages, emails, and meetings aren’t focused, clear, and goal-oriented, they can result in misunderstandings and delays in project execution.
The startup should also actively participate in the agency’s strategy development and review execution regularly to ensure alignment. If the startup is working with an agency that has fractional CMOs, that CMO brings a big advantage: they can also actively participate in the SaaS startup’s strategies.
Solution: Have open, regular communication channels, such as weekly or bi-weekly meetings, to discuss progress, address concerns, and provide feedback. The agency should be included in the startup's team communication software, such as Slack or Teams. You don’t have to include the whole agency or team, but one or two points of contact should be included.
A good relationship between the client and agency includes an open communication culture where ideas and concerns can be shared comfortably.
Finally, project management software, such as Asana, Trello, or Monday.com, can improve communication, project management, and task organization to ensure that the whole team is working toward the same goal.
3. Ignoring Data-Driven Decision Making:
When businesses begin to make decisions based on executives’ gut feelings or anecdotal evidence, this can lead to poor decisions that negatively affect the business. For instance, you may invest too much into channels that don’t provide any return. Ignoring data-driven insights and opportunities can also limit the startup’s ability to grow and explore emerging trends. Finally, your SaaS startup may miss shifts in market trends and customer behavior early on. Ignoring these changes can lead to slow reactions, lost revenue, and marketing share.
Solution: To power their successful marketing efforts, the startup and SaaS marketing agency must be aligned on goals, KPIs, and data-driven strategies. When data from campaigns isn’t tracked, evaluating the agency’s performance becomes difficult, and if strategies are powered by intuition, money will be wasted. So, ensure that decisions and strategies are based on data.
4. Failing to Evaluate Agency Experience and Expertise:
When evaluating marketing agencies, you need to ensure they have experience in the SaaS industry to implement the most effective strategies to reach your results.
The SaaS startup should also analyze the agency’s track record by reading case studies and reviews and talking to its clients. If the agency has inconsistent results or unhappy clients, it may be unreliable or ineffective.
Solution: Conduct thorough research into different agencies with a track record in the SaaS industry. You should talk to other startups and ask about marketing agencies they’ve worked with. When you’ve narrowed down your options, you should read the case studies that the agency provides. Ask to speak to 1-2 founders the outsourced agency has worked with to hear their perceptions of the results and process they received. These should be companies that are of similar size and who had pain points your own business is experiencing. Finally, schedule a meeting to discuss the agency’s approach, methodologies, and alignment with your business’s goals and cultures.
Read our new blog 13 SaaS Marketing Agencies with B2B SaaS Niche Expertise.
5. Wanting Immediate Results:
Another common issue that startups and agencies face working together is clients with unrealistic expectations and agencies that don’t clarify what is possible. Consistent and fast success is difficult to achieve and can lead to frustration and disappointment.
These feelings put the business relationship between the marketing agency and the SaaS startup in danger.
When short-term results are prioritized over long-term growth, future sales and sustainability can suffer. It’s important to manage both short-term and long-term results to ensure that your business can grow consistently.
Solution: During the evaluation phase, the startup should be open about its goals, timelines, and budget. The agency needs to be clear about what can be achieved within those restrictions. The expectations need to be aligned so that results can be reached and the brand can be built up, both of which take time. Ideally, the agency and startup should generate leads and sales and build a sustainable marketing strategy with a consistent sales pipeline to drive long-term growth. Deciding KPIs and agreeing on the goals together assesses your marketing efforts' effectiveness and identifies what areas can be improved.
Choosing the Best Marketing Agency for Your SaaS Startup
Finding an agency that creates data-based strategies, works towards your goals, is accountable for results, communicates clearly, understands SaaS, and generates demand in the short- and long-term is a challenge.
However, it’s not impossible.
Kalungi is a full-service, B2B SaaS marketing agency that has driven rapid customer growth for over 100 pioneering software companies.
Each client engagement is led by an experienced CMO, performed by a flexible team of SaaS marketing experts, and guided by Kalungi’s proven go-to-market playbook for software (T2D3). This instant-on team assures 100% accountability for marketing. Our pay-for-performance contracts are built to each client’s specific growth goals. To date, over 100 successful B2B SaaS companies have trusted Kalungi’s team to deliver ARR expansion, customer growth, and market leadership. Schedule a discovery call here.
